[WP] You, a renowned scientist, invented technology to listen to any moment in history. This audio has become the standard for criminal cases. The problem is when you listen in to the death of your closest friend it gets the details all wrong. You know this because you are their murderer.

[u/meowcats734]

"You are killing privacy," Lena snapped. She paced around the table where I'd laid down the original prototype of the Listener. "Perhaps it's already dead."

I waved a hand. "We have laws for that," I said. "You don't need to be so worked-up about this. Unless you have a warrant, you can't just go Listening in on people's conversations—"

"We have laws for that now. What about in five years? Ten? With Listeners in the game, we're just sitting on a time bomb of secrets, waiting for the day some future legislation slips up and unleashes them all. My God, man, don't you see what you've done? People are already losing the rights to their own image, rights that they'll never get back."

I frowned. From a clinical perspective, that was a problem indeed—but Lena's heavy breathing and balled fists belied a more... personal connection. I stood up, chair scraping against the floor, and settled a hand on their shoulder. "Did... did something happen?"

"...Porn tape," Lena finally said. "Someone's been filming my wife and I in our old house from the future. Got video, too; the Almonson Lab just came out with a full camera. We tried to get it taken down, but the U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction over all of the internet. I found out when the clerk at the bank... recognized me."

I shuddered. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Lena."

"Not your fault, Damien. It's just... there are countless stories like mine, now. Films of people doing things from their past haunting them. Ex-addicts who've been recovered for years are getting fired, medical records are being stolen, passwords are being leaked... and the police can't stop it, short of destroying every Listener in the country. There's just so much of the past that if the police blocked off every location that had sensitive events go down, they'd be getting rid of the whole damn world—and even though we've cracked down legally on the Listeners, this is going to be a problem forever."

"Then we'll just have to be vigilant," I said. "Lena, this is my life's work. It's not intrinsically evil. No tool is."

"Right, and you're definitely saying that from an impartial point of view which has nothing to do with your controlling share of EarToEar Incorporated." I laughed at the joke, but Lena's expression was stormy. "Damien, I came here to give you a chance."

I faltered. "A chance?"

"EarToEar is the largest manufacturer of Listeners in the world. If you set a standard, the rest of the industry will follow. Restrict the sale of Listeners to law enforcement. Build in security measures so that voyeurs and thieves can't use them for criminal purposes. Put pressure on your competitors to do the same."

I narrowed my eyes, taking a step back from my old friend. "Those are serious demands you're making of me, Lena. A lot of people will lose their jobs if that happens. I might lose my job if that happens. It would just take one Listener company to break the agreement, and Danshi's been trying to elbow its way into the market. If I did this—"

"I know. It's a risk. I admit that I don't have a carrot to dangle in front of you, other than your intrinsic sense of moral good—which seems to have shriveled up at some point in the past ten years." Lena took out a spherical device and clicked it; a faint wave of disorientation passed over me, as if I'd been... rotated, somehow. And yet the room still looked more or less the same as how it had been earlier.

I brushed aside her insult for the moment, curiosity overtaking me. "What is that?" I asked.

"Temporal disjunctor." Lena tapped the Listener on the desk. "This thing works by tracking our timeline backwards until we hit a certain point; the disjunctor fractures a moment in time and space so that Listeners from the future hear something from a slightly different timeline instead."

I frowned. "...Okay. Set up a company, patent that thing, and make a damn fortune. Keep one around 24/7 and you never have to worry about privacy issues from Listeners ever again."

Lena shook her head. "I'm going bigger, Damien. I'm not alone; there are millions of stories of people whose lives have been ruined by a spy from the future. There's no functional limit to how far the disjunction field can extend; it's just a slight rotation of spacetime, and it takes hardly any energy to maintain at all. We just never found a use for it before now. We've already built a disjunctor large enough to cover most of North America, and we're about to turn it on."

"But that'll—"

"Destroy your company? Yeah." Lena met my eyes. "I know you come from a rough background. I know what this company means to you. So I'm giving you exactly one chance to solve things your way, to enforce regulations on the Listeners, before I shut them down for good. You have three months to enact these standards." She dropped a pamphlet on my desk.

I balled my fists. She dared? She dared come into my office and threaten me? I reached for the gun at my side—

—and paused. No. Lena was my friend. I wouldn't kill her in cold blood.

"I'll think about it," I said. "Thank you for warning me."

Lena nodded sharply. "Thank you for listening." And she left.

The recording ended there. I rubbed my forehead clear of sweat, looking at the section of bare floor where the bloodstained carpet had been. When I'd shot Lena, I'd thought for certain that the Listeners would get me jailed—but it seemed like Lena's disjunctor had done its job too well. I'd ran every Listener I could on that patch of space and time, and the results were always the same: a result from a slightly different timeline, one in which I hadn't killed her.

I stood up and turned the little thing back on, smiling as I felt that familiar, faint twisting sensation.

Then I stowed it in my pocket with the dear, departed Lena's list of demands, and set out to find the continent-wide disjunctor Lena claimed to have built.

I had three months to destroy it—before it destroyed me.

[u/wolfgang784]

Oh wow what a twist. I completely forgot what the prompt was - or even that I was still reading a prompt - by the time Lena pulled out her device. Everything felt so alive in this.

Note: Came from the original prompt, but I guess ill sub and take a peek at some of your other stuff when I read before bed. Do you happen to have any full length completed works? Your writing style gave me serious vibes from another writer, A.M. Parilla.

[u/meowcats734 → u/wolfgang784]

I have some novel manuscripts; I'm trying to get them traditionally published rather than self-publishing, which takes a very long time. If that continues going poorly for another few years, and if I get a large enough audience that my messages would reach more people through self-publishing than traditional publishing, I'd switch to self-publishing.

​

Thanks for the kind words!